The present invention relates to an installation for amusement park, installation referred to as roller coaster.
Whatever their generation or their categories and sub-categories, all roller coasters have certain immutable characteristics in common, which make these installations a creation apart, and a unique type.
In the first instance, they involve circuits in which after having been towed to the starting point of the circuit, vehicles then move at significant speeds, sometimes 100 kilometres an hour or more at the peak, under the combined effect of the trace of the track, which consists of one or more rails, and of gravity. The vehicles move on, beneath, or at the side of the rail(s), depending on the category or sub-category concerned.
In the second instance, the circuits of roller coasters are not long rectilinear toboggans; on the contrary, they have track traces which consist of concatenations of various acrobatic shapes, diverse and more or less daring. These track traces impose acceleration values on the passengers which are also as widely diverse and varied as the figures adopted, and which may, momentarily, amount to several g.
In the third instance, the aim of the roller coasters is not to transport or convey the passengers for the purpose of the voyage. The ingredient, albeit definitely subjective, which constitutes the true aim of the roller coasters is to provide the passengers with something different, to offer them an experience and sensations which are out of the ordinary.
From the point of view of these sensations, each passenger probably experiences a different sensation, and, on the assumption that the same passenger goes all over the circuit several times, it is also probable that he will not undergo the same experience twice over.
The enormous success of the roller coaster among the public is due to the fact that the cocktail of sensations is as inevitable as it is changeable, but it changes nothing in the fact that this cocktail is always deliciously explosive.
Among the sensations or emotions which may be mentioned there are, clearly, the exhilaration of the speed, the vertigo, the acceleration, the loss of orientation, the feeling of flying and of hurtling through space, but there is also the sense of risk and of its infinite subordinate emotions, the whole range of fears, mental or irrational, and the parallel range of various degrees of satisfaction of having conquered one""s fear for some or of having overcome one""s apprehension for others.
It is true that these elements are less technical, but they are fundamental, because every technique employed is not an end in itself; the ultimate aim of the technique is, and remains, to create these emotions, to emphasise them, and to cause new expressions of these emotions to be borne of the imagination; in brief, to render the cocktail more attractive and still more explosive.
In this spirit, the objective of the present invention is to propose a roller coaster offering all the customary shaped and figures in the usual comfort and safety, but in which each passenger has, from the point of view of their emotions, on the one hand the feeling of being seated astride on the buffer beam of a railway wagon, set in motion at great speed, and, on the other hand, also has the disquieting view of the close and dizzying twist and turn of the rails and the sleepers beneath him, indeed just beneath him.
Up to now, the element of the feeling of risk has always been present with roller coasters, but, by contrast, it has never been cultivated for its own sake and applied as is the case with the present invention, or at least never to this degree.
There are two main known types of roller coaster, those which run on rails and those which run beneath them, known as suspended roller coasters.
In order to achieve the objective of the invention as described heretofore, the installation necessarily belongs to the category of roller coasters which run on rails. If, as is intended, inspired by a vision from a nightmare, the passenger is obliged to see rails and sleepers falling away beneath him, nothing should be interposed between the passenger and the rails; in other words, there should be no floor.
A sub-category of the suspended roller coasters already offers the particular feature of having neither walls nor floors around the passenger. One example is provided in European Patent EP 0545860. There is, however, one important difference between a suspended roller coaster such as this and a roller coaster running on rails. In either case, the passengers board and alight at a station. In the case of the suspended roller coaster without a floor, when the train arrives in the station the distance between the feet of the passengers and the ground decreases progressively, in the manner of the arrival of a chair lift. The train stops, and, as the case may be, jack elements raise the base from the ground by some centimetres, and the passengers disembark in order to yield their places to those embarking. There is no need for a floor, since the ground (or whatever takes its place) fulfils this role.
With a roller coaster which runs on rails, the elimination of the floor of the vehicle is a different matter entirely. In effect, when it comes to boarding and alighting, the floor is essential. It is for this reason that, among roller coasters which run on rails, none are known which do not have a floor.
In order to create the roller coaster according to the invention, it is necessary to break the taboo, i.e. to remove an indispensable element, the floor of the vehicle, while striving as a consequence to fulfil its function by another means which remains to be created, if possible.
The installation, referred to as a roller coaster, according to the invention, comprises:
a circuit formed of rails, mounted on supports which are themselves fixed on a carrying beam, on which there run:
one or more vehicles, designed to run on the rails, as opposed to suspended roller coasters,
and at least one station for passengers to embark and disembark, each vehicle comprising a main beam, at least one transverse chassis on which are mounted, on the one hand, wheels which interact with rails, and, on the other hand, seats provided with retention means, and the station comprising at least one platform, wherein the station, or its platform respectively, comprise a fold-away floor which replaces the absent floor of the vehicle when the vehicle is stopped in a predetermined position for embarkation/disembarkation, and accordingly allows for the vehicle to be constructed without any floor, and, in consequence, avoid any bodywork element to be interposed between the eyes of the passenger and the rails or the rail supports respectively.
The vehicles of the installation comprises a main beam, at least one transverse chassis on which are mounted, on the one hand, wheels interacting with rails and, on the other, seats provided with retention means, and nothing else, in particular no floor.
In the station of the installation, the fold-away floor and its means for control, deployment, and retraction, are of one and the same piece with the station or of its platform respectively.